


Fever Dreams

by megupic



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: One Shot, possible beginning of a series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 12:19:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9548753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megupic/pseuds/megupic
Summary: When Nath shows up to school sick and ends up falling asleep during class, he wakes up to the strangest series of events. Is it a dream, or reality?





	

**Author's Note:**

> So at this point I'm not even sure if this will be a part of a longer work or if I'll just leave it here as a one-shot. If this IS going to be a part of a longer work, then consider this a prologue. This originally started out as a writing exercise in hopes to get rid of writer's block. My friend and beta, Andrew, suggested I try to do something weird, different, random, or something else I wouldn't normally do and this is what I got out of that.

Nath shouldn’t have gone to school Monday morning. His head was pounding, his brain was leaking out of his nose, and his lungs ached from struggling to suck in air to breathe while at the same time hacking it back up, along with bits of his lungs.

Or at least that’s what it felt like.

Honestly, was he even allowed to go to school when he was this sick? Not that his mom had noticed. Well, it wasn’t her fault. At least, he didn’t blame her. She’d been running herself into the ground with the new gallery opening and working on several commissions for high-paying clients whose deadlines were coming up fast. He’d tried to help her but after the stress of school plus the all-nighters helping his mom, as well as taking care of his nine year old brother, he must’ve picked up something along the way.

And now he was dying on a hard, wooden desk so his mom wouldn’t have to worry about him.

The usual classroom sounds around him--his classmates talking and laughing together, the thumps of bags dropping onto desks, footsteps on the wood floor, pencils tapping against the desks--were muddled and distant. It was like they were all underwater, or on the other side of a glass wall. The sounds made up a dull roar in his ears but he couldn’t quite focus on anything that was going on.

He groaned and pulled his hood over his head, burying it in his arms. At least the soft material of his hoodie was a comfort. He sighed and closed his eyes, heavy with exhaustion.

***

Hot. It was really, really hot. The fever must’ve gotten worse because he was pretty sure he was burning alive in his hoodie. Sweat rolled down his neck and face, plastering his hair to his skin and making it itch uncomfortably. He hated the slick feeling of his hair sticking to his skin. He needed to get it out of the way now. He coughed, his lungs aching as they tried to suck in as much air as possible. It burned when he breathed, like he was swallowing hot coals and there was a crackling, roaring noise filling his ears. He didn’t know what sort of bug he had, but this definitely wasn’t the flu.

Muddled voices floated around the room, bits and pieces of a conversation near him coming in and out of focus.

“My Lady we don’t have time for this!”

“I--just a sec!”

“The akuma...we have...out...building’s gonna...down! ...dangerous!”

Nath shifted restlessly in his seat and tried to bury his head deeper into his arms and shut out the voices. Just let him sleep...

Suddenly someone with an iron grip grabbed his arm and roughly hauled him up. His eyes flew open, but his vision was blurred. It was dark in the classroom, shadows dancing along the walls. Bright orange and red light was flickering in the distance. What was going on? Did they start a class exercise he hadn’t known about?

“Nathanael!” the person attached to the claw dragging him up shouted at him. He winced. They could have just asked him to get up, no need to manhandle him.

“Nathanael we need to go!” she yelled at him, sounding urgent. She tugged on his arm and they stumbled together down the steps and through the room. He leaned on her, barely able to keep himself up. Honestly, he should’ve stayed home. Didn’t she see that he was too sick to participate? Just let him go back to sleep!

The room spun around him and his knees buckled, nearly bringing them both down. He clung to the person as a violent cough racked his lungs, leaving him even more exhausted and weak when the fit was over. Was it just him or was it even harder to breathe?

“Chat!”

Chat? As in Chat Noir? What did he have anything to do with this? Last he checked, the superhero wasn’t in his class. He’d have noticed, he didn’t exactly blend in wearing a black leather catsuit. The sound of pounding footsteps against the floor approached them and a silhouette appeared out of the haze. Nath’s focus shifted, blurring the figure. It was the last he saw before he slipped into the cool, quiet, dark depths of sleep.

It only seemed like a couple of seconds had passed before the sounds of an underwater conversation started to fill the darkness where he lay. He frowned. Was nowhere quiet enough to get some decent enough sleep?!

But even still, he strained to hear what the distorted voices were saying. He could pick up bits and pieces if he focused really hard…

“Here, take him.”

“But--”

“I don’t have time for this, please just watch him!”

A sigh. “Ridiculous…”

And then several cool, soft things with sharp ends--fingers?--brushed across his forehead and swept his hair away.

He let out a soft sigh. It felt nice. It was cooler here...maybe his fever was finally breaking?

His eyelids felt heavy and glued shut, but he needed to see who was with him. It took him a few tries, but eventually the darkness gave way to a shadow looming over him. A splash of yellow stood out from the rest of the shadows and he couldn’t help but chuckle.

Chloe Bourgeois of all people? Wow, he must really, really be sick to dream up something like that.


End file.
